


in the drift

by elysianprince



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Drift Compatibility, Getting Together, M/M, Mentions of Civil War (Marvel), Minor Carol Danvers/James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25134361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysianprince/pseuds/elysianprince
Summary: Finally, after what had seemed like endless weeks of tests and training exercises, Tony was suited up and in the conn-pod with his copilot to his right, preparing for their first drift together.He had been waiting for this moment for too long.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	in the drift

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this idea a few months ago during my annual rewatch of Pacific Rim, and I had a good time exploring some of the possibilities. I hope you enjoy it too!
> 
> Thank you to [theinkquiry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinkquiry) for being my lovely beta.

He was almost giddy with excitement.

Finally, after what had seemed like endless weeks of tests and training exercises, Tony was suited up and in the conn-pod with his copilot to his right, preparing for their first drift together.

Tony had been waiting for this moment for too long.

He’d been working on Jaegers for years, designing them, building them, getting them back in working order after pilots dragged his beautiful machines back from nasty encounters with Kaiju. Stark Industries had been on the forefront of the war against the Kaiju since the initial invasion, and were still in the thick of it now even with governments worldwide pulling their funding from the Jaeger Program and putting it towards building _walls_ of all things. As if a wall could ever stop the force of a Kaiju hellbent on eradicating humanity.

Even despite the withdrawal of government support, Stark Industries continued to pour all its resources into the Jaeger Program. Tony refused to be standing at the end of the world without having done everything he possibly could have, though it took a few years to convince Marshal Fury that Tony himself should be the one piloting. Reluctant to let their best engineer put his life on the line, Fury had refused his repeated requests to join the Ranger program, but it seemed desperation had changed the man’s tune as fewer and fewer recruits were entering the program.

Which was why Tony was currently standing there, fully outfitted in his own drivesuit, about to drift for the first time with one Steve Rogers.

The man had immediately caught Tony’s attention when he had been transferred from a Shatterdome that had been taken out of commission. Granted, Tony had heard of him well before then; he’d always kept up with the various Jaeger pilots across the world, their success rates, what equipment and tactics worked in battle and what didn’t. Steve Rogers had somehow managed to get his Jaeger back to shore after a particularly awful Kaiju battle that had left his copilot, James Barnes, unconscious when the beast had ripped through the conn-pod. Barnes lost his arm from the injuries, but as Tony had seen for years and years, it could have been so much worse. As it was, he could no longer pilot with Rogers, and the duo’s Jaeger had been decommissioned.

But everyone knew that side of Rogers, the hero with the near perfect kill rate until that final mission several months ago. After the initial commotion at his arrival on base, not many people paid attention to the man behind that story, the one who had stepped foot out of that helicopter looking like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

That was the man Tony had come to know over the course of the past few weeks. Rogers had been a little cold and distant at first, but Tony was nothing if not persistent, and he eventually wore down the shield Steve had put up to protect himself.

And honestly, Tony was downright thrilled that Rogers had been picked to be his copilot. He was the only one who had managed to match Tony one-for-one in the combat room. Rogers never put up with anyone’s bullshit, from Tony’s endless teasing to any of the bullies within the Jaeger Program. Tony found himself naturally drawn to the man, and even though they butted heads occasionally, Tony was captivated by the man’s dry humor and his drive to protect the earth from Kaiju. He might have been a bit vocal about his opinion on who should be his partner, but Tony needed someone who would help keep him on the right path, and for him… Steve Rogers was that person.

Even though Barnes was no longer a pilot, somehow Rogers had found a way to bring him along to the Malibu Shatterdome. Tony was also fairly certain he had somehow guilted Fury into finding a position for Barnes as a trainer for new recruits, but Fury would probably rather lose his other eye than admit he had a soft spot for any of the rangers.

The two were inseparable, Rogers and his grumpy cat, and it would have potentially made Tony maybe just a little bit jealous if he wasn’t ninety-percent sure Barnes was in a relationship with one half of the Black Hawk team (Tony just wasn’t certain _which_ half). Anyway, he felt like it said a lot about the kind of person Steve truly was that he refused to allow the system to abandon his friend after Barnes had given so much to the cause. But then again, the bond that Jaeger pilots shared… was something truly indescribable.

A bond that they were about to share.

Pilots brought a lot into the drift with them; Tony wasn’t going to let whatever feelings he had developed for Rogers make him naively hopeful about the whole thing. They were going to see everything: the good, the bad, and the really fucking awful. There was no hiding from each other, and no point in attempting to either, as it would just make their connection unstable. 

When Rogers stepped into the conn-pod, he seemed a bit... nervous? There was tension in the way he was holding himself, and it looked like he was clenching his jaw hard enough to grind rocks into dust. Tony had thought they had both been anticipating this moment, but now a sliver of doubt was creeping into Tony’s mind at seeing his soon-to-be copilot looking apprehensive.

“Ready for the Vulcan mind meld?” Tony asked, wiggling his fingers at Rogers to try to ease the tension.

That seemed to help a bit, as the ranger clearly bit his bottom lip to keep from outright laughing at Tony’s antics, though there was still a weariness in his eyes that was unbefitting a man of his age. Tony couldn’t help but wish that they could have been born into a world that wasn’t on the precipice of destruction.

“Are you?” Those beautiful blue eyes bore into Tony’s, like his soul was being laid bare before they even began. “What you’re about to see… it’s a lot.”

 _Well, that wasn’t unsettling at all._ Of course Tony expected that Rogers would bring memories of his final mission with Barnes into the drift, but the man’s tone seemed to imply more than that. It left Tony feeling a bit unsteady under Rogers’s gaze, unable to even begin to parse what he could mean by his statement.

“Contrary to popular belief, my life hasn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows either,” Tony felt the need to counter with, then gave a firm nod as he added, “We’ll be fine, Steve.”

He hoped the use of the man’s first name would help settle him somehow, and Tony saw the last of the wariness fade from his eyes as the determined glint he was used to seeing during training took over. Steve nodded back as the crew began the process of connecting their suits to the Jaeger.

Tony had been in the command center dozens upon dozens of times when pilots were preparing to drift for the first time, and the words coming across the speaker system were familiar as they went through procedures ingrained in his memory. The pilots’ suits were hooked into the Jaeger’s system, and Tony took a deep breath as the officer in mission control began a countdown until the drift was initiated.

This was it.

When the drift initiated, it was like being dropped into a pool of memories, blurry images washed in shades of red and blue that slowly came into focus as Tony oriented himself in the rush of his and Steve’s memories.

Feeling like he finally got his feet back under him, Tony allowed himself a brief moment to consider one of his own memories that had stuck in his mind a bit more than the others that had flurried by. He’d pushed it deeper and deeper down in recent years. The last time he had seen his parents before they were killed in a Kaiju attack that had made landfall. There was a swell of emotions in Tony’s chest as he saw his mother’s kind face in the crimson hues of his memories.

Just before the worst of his regret could hit him, Tony reeled his emotions back in and tried to push it all to the back of his mind and focus on the Jaeger. The voice of the officer in mission control became clearer as Tony channeled his focus and got his emotions in check.

And then there was a harsh jolt and a flash of deep blues as a scream ripped through his head.

A Kaiju’s enormous claws were ripping through the conn-pod, and Tony whipped around and reached his hand out to check on Steve, but the pilot next to him was… Barnes. The pilot was screaming in agony as he clutched his left arm, shredded metal and electrical sparks showering around him.

No, this wasn’t real.

This was one of Steve’s memories. Faintly, Tony can hear a voice saying something about being out of alignment, but there was another flash of blue before he could call out Steve’s name. 

Tony blinked against the sudden and harsh brightness of a sunny sky, and as things came into focus, he realized he was standing in the middle of a destroyed city street, dust and rubble and mangled cars making it look like some sort of… war zone. He took in his surroundings, and if he had to make a guess judging by what remained of the buildings, he’d say it was New York City. This couldn’t be the aftermath of a Kaiju attack; they’d never made it that far from the breach.

There was a group of oddly dressed people worriedly gathered around a motionless figure in some sort of mechanical suit on the dusty street. Tony squinted as he took in their appearances; a man with a flowing cape, another man in a form-fitting suit that was a bit… patriotic and star-spangly, and a creature that looked like Frankenstein’s monster on steroids.

The man in the form-fitting suit caught Tony’s attention more than the others. He was knelt next to the man in the suit, clearly at a loss as to what he should do. His movements, his shoulders… the man reminded him so much of Steve that Tony started taking steps forward without even realizing it.

Before he can get a glimpse of the face of the man wrapped up in an American flag, Tony saw the face of the figure on the ground and stopped dead in his tracks. It was… _himself?_

What? This… nothing like this had ever happened. Tony would have remembered it, if not whatever destruction had been wrought upon the city, then definitely Steve’s Uncle Sam get-up.

Suddenly, the creature let out a bellowing roar, and Tony felt another jolt shake their connection. The images became foggy, like his copilot might be trying to rein them in. Tony’s own mind was reeling from seeing himself in what was supposed to be Steve’s memories, but Tony had never built a suit like that before. It’d be too small to fight Kaiju in unless you wanted to get smacked out of the sky like a bothersome gnat.

Before Tony could even begin to parse what he had seen, a massive cloud of dust blew in, causing him to reflexively shield his eyes even though he knew it wasn’t real. There was so much more dust than there had been before. The buildings around him are suddenly much smaller, and it dawned on him that it looked like he was in some sort of wild west town. He was standing in what seemed to be the middle of the desert, dry earth crunching underneath his heavy boots as he took a few curious steps towards the closest building.

Judging by the looks of it, the building was the town’s jailhouse, and it sounded like... someone was drunkenly singing _Danny Boy?_ Tony couldn’t see whoever it was coming from, but the man’s voice had the quality of someone who spent too much time at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey (not that Tony would ever know a thing or two about _that_ ).

That memory was swept away even quicker than the strange one before it; Steve was definitely trying to regain control of the chaotic flashes of images. Somewhere in his mind, Tony knew he shouldn’t be following the impulse to see more, but what “memories” he had already seen had the oddest feeling of… familiarity to them. Maybe he was just feeling his copilot’s emotions, but maybe…

The drunken singing was replaced by the sound of wedding bells.

When the azure images came into focus, Tony immediately spotted Steve’s doppelganger again. His hair was a bit different, but he was still all wrapped up in the American flag. Tony made a mental note to ask Steve about that later, along with the millions of other questions rapidly springing to mind.

There was another one of those armor suits like he had seen in the first of Steve’s memories, though this time the person inside appeared to be a dark-haired woman. He supposed that was a bit less jarring than seeing his own face. A glimpse at a wedding program in one of the guest’s hand made Tony freeze in place. _Stark-Rogers._ Well, that was definitely going on the list of things to interrogate Rogers about.

The joyous scene in front of him was shattered by the chilling sound of metal clashing against metal, the happiness and warmth melted away as the clanging rang in his ears.

It was suddenly so cold.

Distantly, Tony knew he shouldn’t follow the sounds, but he couldn’t fight the draw to it as he moved down a corridor towards the source. He had to know despite the sense of dread gnawing at his stomach. He could faintly make out voices above the sound of the clashing echoes he was following; voices like harsh whispers that rang out in his mind.

 _He’s my friend._ Tony could swear that was Steve’s voice.

 _So was I._ His steps faltered at the sound of his own voice.

Despite the rapidly growing uneasiness, Tony continued forward until he came to the source of the noise, and there was that hot-rod red armor again at the center of it. Whoever was in the armor this time was… fighting two other people, a man with dark, messy hair and a metal arm, and… the star spangled man from the other memories. Tony felt as if he were frozen in place as he watched the violent struggle, unable to tear his eyes away from the scene playing out before him.

The man with the metal arm got the upper hand somehow and had the person in the red armor pinned against the wall of the bunker. As the man was desperately clawing into the glowing circle in the chest of the armor, Tony caught a glimpse of his face... A face that he knew.

Barnes.

_He killed my mom._

Taken aback, Tony shook his head at the unbidden thought, his chest suddenly tight with anger and grief. Where did that even come from?

Then there was a brilliant flash of light as a beam emanated from the armor’s chest and blew off the Winter Soldier’s arm, causing him to collapse to the ground.

 _The Winter Soldier...?_ Who… no, that was Barnes. Who the hell was the Winter Soldier?

Memories that just couldn’t be his started flashing through Tony’s mind, almost like some sort of discordant newsreel of a life he didn’t remember living. They all felt so real, so visceral. The overwhelming force of it all caused Tony to lose his balance, his head throbbing painfully from the onslaught.

There was another harsh jolt, and an indistinct voice shouting about alignment again, but Tony wasn’t given a chance to focus on it as overwhelming anguish and betrayal threatened to drown out the rest of his senses. As he was trying to orient himself, suddenly he was grabbed from behind and lifted off his feet. Tony tried to gain control and break away using his boot thrusters (he definitely didn’t recall the drivesuits having _those_ before), but the assailant used his momentum to slam him against a concrete beam, the impact knocking the air out of his lungs.

_”Stark.”_

Immediately, the man in the patriotic suit was upon him, straddling the armor and punching him repeatedly. The helmet that the man was wearing concealed much of his face, but it only took one look into those fierce blue eyes for Tony to confirm his worst thoughts. It was Steve. 

_”Tony.”_

Steve started slamming the shield against the armor’s helmet, cracking it open and ripping it off. He raised the shield again, obviously winding up for the final blow. Tony raised his hands in self-defense, the unfamiliar red of his gauntlets a stark contrast to Steve’s blue uniform.

No, no, _nononono_. This couldn’t be happening. He could have never believed that Steve would lie to him, that _Steve_ would betray him like this. It couldn’t end like this. It just couldn’t—

“Tony!”

And everything froze.

The shield was stopped mid-swing, just inches above the glowing center of the armor. Tony released the breath he didn’t realize he was holding in, and the bone-chilling cold began to fade away along with the scenery around him. He pushed off the concrete pillar to roll over onto his side, scrambling to get himself vertical again, but his limbs were unsteady and tingly, almost like they had fallen asleep.

“This isn’t real, Tony.”

As the images around him slowly began dissipating into ambiguous blurs of blue again, Tony looked up to see who had been calling out to him. It was Steve again, but instead of that unfamiliar uniform, his copilot was back in his drive suit, hand outstretched in Tony’s direction. It wasn’t some strange doppelganger this time, it was his Steve. He looked… shaken in a way Tony had never seen from him before, a mix of desperation and horror clouding Steve’s clear blue eyes. Finally, the cold that had tried to settle itself in Tony’s bones faded away, something that tasted like shame bubbling up within him as he came back to reality.

He had chased the rabbit.

“Both pilots are out of alignment.” The voice over the comm system was clear now. “I repeat, Stark and Rogers, you are both out of alignment. We’re shutting it down.”

When they were disconnected from the system, Tony took a shaky breath and sank to his knees on the metal floor of the conn-pod, unable to remain standing from the weight of everything he just saw crashing down on him. He chanced a look up at his copilot to his side, but Steve averted his eyes and rushed out of the conn-pod the moment the door opened.

Well, wasn’t that just _grand._

——

He tossed and turned as he attempted to find some sort of relatively comfortable way to lay as he stayed in bed way past the acceptable time at the Shatterdome. Tony had hardly slept at all that night, plagued by nightmares that weren’t his, of Kaiju coming through portals from _space_ , of the people he cared about dying because of his failures.

What he had seen in the drift, the memories of him and Steve… it just couldn’t be them. He racked his mind all through the night, but he couldn’t remember meeting Steve before a few weeks ago when he arrived at the base. Though, it felt as if he had known the man for an entire lifetime.

Steve had left before Tony could say a single word to him about what had happened, but Tony didn’t even know what he would have even begun to say to the man if he had been given a chance. Hours later, his mind was still reeling from everything he had seen, trying to parse any kind of coherent narrative to it all.

There was a sharp series of knocks at the door that disrupted Tony’s thoughts, and he groaned and rolled over, pulling the sheets over his head in preparation for what he knew was coming next.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!” chorused a much too cheerfully awake voice as the door was thrown open so hard that it clattered against the wall as it made contact. The sheet over his head was ripped away, and Tony was greeted with the sight of blonde locks and a playful smirk.

He grumbled and tried to free the sheets from Carol’s grasp, to no avail. “Are you just going to stand there and watch while I’m under attack, platypus?”

“She’s tired of you moping,” Rhodey answered, watching them struggle with the sheet from the doorway.

Tony finally gave up and let go of the sheet, knowing he wasn’t going to win against Carol Danvers in any contest of strength or bullheaded-ness. “I’m not moping,” he muttered.

“This looks a lot like moping to me,” Carol joked as she gestured to Tony wrapped up in his bedsheets like a burrito, hair sticking out in random directions from rolling around for so many hours.

“You would know, Carebear,” Tony shot back, though the bite was missing from his voice.

Rhodey quietly closed the door to Tony’s room before pulling over a nearby chair next to Tony’s bed and sitting in it. “So… what happened in there, Tones?”

Tony let out a big sigh and shifted in bed so he was sitting upright and facing his friends. “Honestly? I can’t even begin to understand it myself, let alone explain it.” Rhodey’s eyebrows shot up at Tony’s admission.

He made an attempt to explain it anyway, the mysterious memories he had seen in the drift, the subsequent nightmares, and the few theories he had been tossing around at that point. Rhodey and Carol listened intently, not offering any words of doubt despite the whole thing being (quite frankly) absolutely unbelievable. But that was just how the pair was, and Tony was forever grateful to have them in his life.

“Well, you probably don’t want to hear this—” Rhodey started.

“Then don’t say it,” Tony interrupted with a pout.

“—but you’re not going to get any real answers until you talk to Rogers about this,” he finished. Tony rolled his eyes and slumped further into bed.

“Coffee might also help,” Rhodey added with a playful smirk as he put the chair back from where he’d pulled it.

Before Carol opened the door, she pointed in mock-threat at Tony. “You’ve got five minutes to look presentable or else I’m dragging you down to the mess hall in your sheets.”

“Your threats are hollow, Danvers,” Tony called out as the door clicked closed behind his friends. With a sigh, he untangled himself from the sheets and kicked them off to get up and make an attempt at looking like a somewhat presentable human, lest he face the wrath of Carol Danvers busting down his door again.

Of course, when Tony finally made his way to the mess hall, there were only a few stragglers still milling about from the morning rush, and Steve wasn’t among them. Tony tried his best to ignore the conflicting mixture of relief and disappointment within himself as he got some coffee. He had just finished filling a cup with what remained of the luke-warm coffee this late in the morning when a looming shadow fell over his shoulder. The sudden presence caused him to startle with a bitten-off curse as some of the coffee sloshed out of the cup and onto his hand.

Tony could swear he heard a stifled snort as he wiped the liquid off his hand with a napkin he grabbed from nearby.

“Barnes, don’t sneak up on me until _after_ I’ve had my coffee. I feel like this has been established multiple times.”

When he turned to meet eyes with the former pilot, the expression on his face wasn’t exactly the friendliest, but Barnes also didn’t look like he had come to kick Tony’s ass, at least. There was an awkward beat of silence between them.

“I swear I didn’t do anything to him,” Tony filled the silence, raising his hands defensively.

To that, Barnes rolled his eyes. “I know.”

“Oh.” Then it dawned on him. “You _know,_ don’t you?”

Barnes gave him a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes, and an uneasy feeling was beginning to creep up Tony’s throat as he recalled what he had seen and heard, the all-consuming anger he had felt towards the man in front of him in that memory.

“He’s told me bits here and there, but it’s not mine to talk about.”

“Oh, here we go again. I should’ve known what to expect from his Robin.” Barnes scrunched up his face at the comment, but Tony ignored him. “Lemme guess, I should go talk to him?”

“Look, it was wrong of him to just leave you like that without any explanation, but sometimes he’s just not… great with people, or dealing with… things.” Tony raised his eyebrows as the former pilot started rambling a bit. “Stark, just go talk to him. He’s holed up in our room being all mopey, and you’re both being stubborn.”

It felt as though Barnes didn’t leave any room there for a comeback, so Tony nodded. At this point, he couldn’t avoid the conversation any longer, and neither of them were going to feel any better until he talked to Steve about it. Tony left the mess hall with only his barely warm coffee in hand; he didn’t have much of an appetite right now anyway.

On the way to Steve’s quarters, Tony nervously chugged the bland, cold coffee until he found himself standing outside of the door, fiddling with the empty cup and trying to build up the nerve to knock. Finally, he just reached out and knocked before he could psyche himself out. In the twenty-something seconds it took for Steve to open the door, Tony considered abandoning the attempt at reaching out at least five times.

Then the heavy, metal door opened, and Tony was rooted to the spot, staring at an uncharacteristically disheveled Steve Rogers. He was a _mess,_ dark bags under his eyes and his hair mussed and sticking up in ways that Tony was trying desperately to not find endearing. And there was an oppressive wave of exhaustion coming off of the way the man was holding himself.

“Rough night?” Tony offered.

They stared at each other in silence for a moment before Steve moved like he was about to close the door without a word.

“If you shut that in my face, I’ll just go get the Terminator to bust it down for me.” Quickly, Tony reached out to put a hand on the door, though he didn’t try to force it the rest of the way open. “I know what that arm is capable of, I made it.”

With a sigh, Steve relinquished his hold on the door and headed further into the room. Tony slipped inside and quietly closed the door behind him, keeping a wary eye on his troubled friend as he did so. It didn’t seem like Steve was going to start this conversation himself, so Tony went for it.

“You know, they say after you drift with someone, that you feel like there’s nothing to talk about,” he started. “But I think I deserve an explanation after… whatever the hell that was.”

He watched as Steve sat on the corner of his bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, and his shoulders slumped as though the weight of the world was pressing down on him, like he had the day he arrived at the Shatterdome. The way he folded in on himself made the man look so… small, as if Tony was finally seeing the real man behind the facade of one of the most successful jaeger pilots in history.

Steve sighed heavily before he began, weariness tinting his voice, “I shouldn’t have left you there after that. I… thought I would be able to control it, but you got lost in it instead.”

“You deserved to know what you were getting into, but I was afraid to tell you the truth.” The look of resignation on his face was ill-fitting of a man like Steve, and Tony didn’t like it. “What happened yesterday is on me.”

Tony hesitated a moment, getting lost in the pain-filled depths of Steve’s azure eyes. “So… what _was_ that? Those couldn’t possibly have been memories.” Then he added, “Not… ours at least.”

“Ever since…” Steve wavered for a moment, clearly having difficulty finding the right words. “Ever since that last fight, I’ve been having dreams. Sometimes they’re nightmares, sometimes not.”

Gently, Tony sat down on the bed next to him, leaving as much space between them as he could, trying to not crowd the other man on the narrow mattress. “What do you think they are?”

A self-deprecating grimace twisted Steve’s handsome features. “I’ve been told they’re hallucinations. Likely brought on by the trauma of… piloting alone after Bucky was unconscious.”

“Hm. Okay. But what do _you_ think they are?” Tony insisted. “Come on, I know you graduated at the top of your cadet class, don’t hold back.”

There was a small, yet brief smile on Steve’s face as he turned to Tony. “So you did your research?”

“Just some bare minimum Wikipedia browsing and maybe perusing some government files.” Tony lied, waving his hand dismissively. “This isn’t about me.”

Steve actually laughed at that, the light returning to his eyes as his posture straightened a bit, too. Tony felt like he could breathe a bit easier now that some of the tension had faded from his copilot. He rested his chin on his hand, listening intently as the man began to explain more freely.

“They almost feel like… visions, sometimes. As if they’re of things that could have happened, or maybe have happened someplace else. Either way, they feel like memories that don’t belong to me, like seeing the lives of other people wearing my face.”

“At first, the dreams were just flashes, and I didn’t think anything of it with everything else that was happening then. But they continued for months, getting more and more detailed, and that’s when I recognized…” Steve trailed off, becoming quiet again.

“Me?” Tony added.

Steve nodded, then turned and met Tony’s eyes, his gaze full of certainty. “I… knew I had to meet you somehow. That it was the only way I was going to find any answers about what I was seeing.”

Tony recalled how much he had been drawn to Steve Rogers; keeping track of the pilot’s encounters with Kaiju, perhaps more so than was strictly necessary from a Jaeger engineering standpoint, and that was before he had even met the man. After Steve had arrived at the Shatterdome, Tony had only gravitated towards him even more, but maybe there was more to it than the “crush” Carol and Rhodey had teased him about.

“I just didn’t think they’d be quite so… vivid in the drift,” Steve said apologetically, running a hand through his hair like it might be a nervous habit. “But I don’t know what I expected, some sort of epiphany maybe. It seems that we’re together in all of those other worlds, or whatever they are.” 

“Well, there is the whole multiverse theory,” Tony provided. “You know, worlds where different decisions were made, where we lived different lives. Maybe I’m an evil mastermind in one of them, and you’re my arch nemesis.” Steve playfully rolled his eyes at the joke, and gently knocked his shoulder into Tony’s.

“So what, we’re destined to find each other no matter the universe we’re in?” Steve smiled hesitantly.

“Doesn’t seem too far from it.” Tony returned the smile, letting himself lean closer to Steve. “We were married in one of those, weren’t we?” He paused, hoping he hadn’t just put his whole foot in his mouth. “I know they’re not _us_ , but they’re… us, in a way.”

“Poetic,” Steve said dryly.

“From what I’ve seen… I think they’re the ones who got it right.” There was color creeping up Steve’s neck and his cheeks, and Tony was mesmerized by it.

So he decided to take a chance, “Maybe we can get it right, too.” The smile he earned from Steve left him awestruck and blinded as if he were staring directly into the sun. Suddenly, the room seemed a lot warmer than it had been before. And Steve was so much closer than he had been before…

After a moment of getting lost in each other’s eyes, Steve was the one who broke contact, much to Tony’s disappointment. “To be honest, I was actually worried you’d never want to speak to me again after yesterday, but you really seem to be taking all of this in stride.” 

“Well, it’s a little hard to dismiss something you’ve experienced firsthand,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “Besides, stranger things have happened.” Steve cocked his head curiously, and Tony had to bite his lip and try to ignore how much the action made the blond look like a golden retriever.

“I mean, we pilot giant fucking robots to fight alien monsters that come through a portal at the bottom of the ocean, so. The existence of other universes? Not quite so far-fetched in the grand scheme of things.” And really, he’d be lying if he said the idea wasn’t a bit exciting.

And that was when it hit him like a ton of Kaiju shit.

“The breach,” he breathed. 

He suddenly grabbed Steve’s arm, like he needed an anchor in that moment, and the man just raised an eyebrow at Tony, clearly waiting for him to continue. He let go and pushed off the bed suddenly, inadvertently jostling Steve a bit, then started pacing in the tiny quarters as he quickly launched into an explanation, gesticulating wildly as he did so.

“We’ve always known the breach is some sort of portal the Kaiju use, but we’ve always assumed that they were coming from somewhere in space, right? But what if they’re not? What if the portal connects with a different universe entirely? And your visions, our dreams, they’re just some sort of leaky by-product of the invasion.”

Steve scrunched up his face at the last bit, obviously not feeling the imagery there. It was kinda adorable in that Steve sorta way, but Tony wasn’t about to let himself get distracted.

“Okay, yeah, leaky Kaiju, kinda gross, but anyway— the breach could be causing a ripple effect with nearby quantum universes, and that’s why your horribly close encounter triggered these memories, most likely from the proximity to the Kaiju so soon after it had crossed through the breach.”

His copilot was watching him with hints of awe and fondness in his eyes as Tony continued to pace the room, but Tony froze as something else dawned on him, too.

“This could entirely change how we should be going about trying to close the damned breach.” He hastily ran a hand through his hair. “We’ve been going about it the wrong way this whole time.”

Steve opened his mouth, about to say something, but in that moment, the Kaiju siren started blaring. The two men both froze for a split second, eyes going impossibly wide as they stared at each other before they launched into action.

“Speak of the devils,” Steve muttered as he hurriedly tugged his boots on.

“I’ve gotta tell Fury,” Tony headed towards the door, but he paused in front of it and whirled to face Steve again, stopping him with a hand on his chest.

“Oh, but let’s _not_ do whatever the fuck it was that the two who were fighting each other did, alright?” He added with a roguish smirk. Steve gently placed a hand over Tony’s, and it was like the siren faded into the distance as he gazed into Steve’s clear blue eyes. He couldn’t help but notice the way those eyes briefly darted down to his lips.

“But… those two that were kissing. They might have been onto something there.”

Steve took a step closer, and Tony’s back connected with the door as the man ducked his head closer. “You think?”

Subconsciously, Tony’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “I’d be willing to give it a try, you know, if you are, too. For science.”

“For science,” Steve let out a low chuckle, his breath ghosting over Tony’s lips as he reached out and tilted Tony’s jaw up.

When Steve’s lips finally met his, it was like fireworks, though maybe that was just the sound of the siren blaring throughout the Shatterdome. His lips were softer than Tony had imagined, and Tony wanted to get lost in Steve’s gentle touches forever, he wanted _more_.

As they separated, Steve leaned his forehead against Tony’s, still gently cupping his face with one hand. Tony tried to remember what words were.

“Okay, yeah, that was nice. They were onto something for sure, but I might need to test it again.”

“Tony.”

“Hm?”

“The kaiju.”

“Right. Well, that’s significantly less nice.” Tony pulled himself away from Steve a bit reluctantly, taking time to admire how red Steve’s lips were now. “Come on, let’s get suited up.”

“I hardly think they’ll deploy us after yesterday,” Steve countered as he opened the door, the blaring of the siren became impossibly louder as the noise from the hallway flooded into the room.

“Oh shush, I’m Fury’s favorite, even more so after I tell him about the breach.”

Steve rolled his eyes again in fond exasperation, and Tony’s heart was pounding as they raced down the hallway together towards the command center.

Time to kick some Kaiju ass.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought of it :3c  
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